August 12, 2005

Downloading 2002 Economic Census Data

Economic Census data are released online in PDF, but now users who need manipulate the data in another application have two options. You can download the data from the American FactFinder on the Census Bureau web site. AFF works a little differently in this case than it does for other data sets such as the Census 2000 Summary Files. You choose a sector (e.g., Construction) and then a data set (e.g., Employment Statististics by Establishments for States) and then use the "Options" and "Filters" to narrow down your search or sort the data you want. In addition, the PDF site now has downloadable "drill-down tables" for the geographic area data allowing users to drill down to specific industries for states, metro areas, counties, and places. As the data become available in PDF look for the drill-downs. Of course you can always purchase the data on DVD, but why bother when you can get it free online!

[PDF] or denotes a file in Adobe’s Portable Document Format. To view the file, you will need the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader available free from Adobe.